@Stygmata: The US has a good public health system in spite of itself. The funding cuts and lack of even rudimentary science education (especially amongst elected officials) and yet public health advances and planning have been fairly decent. Failing upwards really.

No small amount of irony in the huffington post putting up tons of panicky links on the coming nightmare pandemic of doom right next to a completely fact free nonsense piece by Jim Carrey on how vaccines are bad.

Re : SARS. I live in Toronto. 44 people died, mainly health care workers and old people. The week it hit, I was working at a huge booksale down the street from where the first cases were. I didn't get it. My friend's wife worked at a hospital and was quarantined.SARS was kinda scary here. In Asia, I think it was much worse.

Anytime I hear some official announcing death tolls, I think of that Monty Python sketch where you have to multiply whatever the chap says by ten. (They put buckets on their heads and sing "And did those feet in ancient times, walk upon England's mountains green?" I don't have a link, sorry. Bit of a digression anyway but oddly appropriate, somehow.)

@ mister hex - Seriously, yesterday I was talking about the numbers out of Mexico and my whole family pretty much agreed that it must be downplayed it extremely. Death/affected tolls are only really accurate after the crisis is over.

Seriously though, to justify my own cynicism, in the UK I find it difficult to shit myself over The Sun and Daily Mail crying Flupocalypse again. Maybe that shit is going to cry wolf us all to oblivion one of these days, but right now I'm unprepared to buy into the Impending Doom as foretold by That Cunt Dacre.

OH man is that guy serious? There's too many damn lunatics out there, perhaps we do deserve to be culled...

People need to teach themselves a few facts about influenza; in fact, the normal flu which does the rounds each and every year is a serious ailment which can be fatal and it's been with us since forever. So those deaths which we have seen up till now might not be anything out of the ordinary.

I am counting down to the first republican screaming head to call for the border with Mexico to be sealed. Perhaps Glenn Beck? Sean Hannity? I'm going with Beck, since that seems his oeuvre.

The second round of that is going to be attacks on Hispanics, especially if "Uhmericuns" start to die. After the bund meetings Palin ran and the Teabaggers tantrums I would almost be shocked if this didn't happen.

@mrarey: I'll go ahead and take the bet now that no racist backlash attacks happen, because no severe outbreak of swine flu in America happens that kills anyone but the very old, very young, and already very feeble, just like every flu.

Really not worried about this until I'm given concrete reason to be, which has yet to happen.

@Ian: 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, a very small number. Almost as small as 1 even. I think rounding that all the way up to Fuck is a bit premature yet.

As far as the numbers being downplayed, I don't think so. Mexico's already shut down their schools and public events, they're already taking the hit to tourism regardless of what happens, at this point the cat's out of the bag, there's no gain to lying about the numbers of infected/deceased. (The only inaccuracy I imagine happening will just be from imperfect data collection, which is tough anyway with flu-tracking.) And considering the CDC hasn't even said to stop traveling to Mexico, on top of which right now we've got, what, 20 confirmed American cases out of literally thousands and thousands of Americans who've recently been to Mexico, and none of those cases have ended in anything but recovery...?

Yeah. Not worrisome. Not yet. (For me. Here in America. Other people will surely be fucked and I'm sad for that, but American Panic Time is still far off and too many of us [even on these forums] love to exhibit such a hair-trigger desire to start smashing that panic button early.)

When 9/11 happened I was dating a girl who was Lebanese. Her family had been here since WWII and the youngest kids didn't even speak the mother tongue. A week after the attacks some hillbillies dumped a port-o-potty on the family lawn and left a note saying "FUCK YOU RAGHEADS". Being hillbillies, with long criminal records and no thought to wearing gloves, they were caught about 2 days later and charged with hate crimes.

All it takes for Americans to go down to the stupid monkey racist level is a clear enemy. Considering the just vicious racism the minutemen and teabaggers have shown, blaming "the mexicans" for this seems almost like a logical stop for them.

@ doclivingston: 'Fuck' is entirely reasonable. I'm only three degrees away from a sick pig, and by flu standards that's not far at all. What that means is that I'm more likely than not to come into contact with this virus. Whether or not I get sick is hard to say, I'll let y'all know.

"because no severe outbreak of swine flu in America happens that kills anyone but the very old, very young, and already very feeble, just like every flu."

You really need to do some research on influenza. Severe flu mainly kills the weak, but healthy adults die of it every year as well. In this outbreak the casualties are mainly young adults in the 25-45 years old bracket, a trait often seen in severe pandemic illnesses.